The
eleven children born to Charles Francis Powys, an Anglican clergyman,
were
a
uniquely precocious family, one of the most significant in the cultural
history
of Britain, of whom the writers John Cowper Powys, T. F. Powys and
Llewelyn
Powys are the most famous. But they also included the architect and
conservationist A. R. Powys, the artist Gertrude Powys, the lacemaker
Marian
Powys, the notable headmaster Littleton Powys and the poet and novelist
Philippa Powys. Primarily, though not exclusively, the focus of the
Society is on the three writing brothers; distinctively unique as both
individuals and authors.

The
Society, a registered charity, was founded to promote and
encourage the
appreciation and enjoyment of the writings of John Cowper, Theodore and
Llewelyn Powys and to establish their true literary status.

The
aims of
The Powys Society are:

- To promote
a wider general readership and stimulate scholarly study and discussion
of the
works of the Powys brothers

- To actively
promote an expanded universe around the Powyses

- To provide
a comprehensive and accurate resource on the life and works of the
Powyses

If
you are an admirer, an enthusiast, a reader, a scholar, or a student of
anything Powysian, then this international society would like to hear
from you, and welcomes
your participation in its activities.

JOIN THE
SOCIETY

Membership
benefits include:

- A
membership pack on joining.

- An
annual Journal devoted to the study of the
life and works of John Cowper, Theodore and Llewelyn Powys plus three
50 page
newsletters (March, July and November).

- The
Society is active in promoting the life and
works of the Powys family. Speakers are arranged for special events.

-
Opportunities to meet fellow Powysians and those
who share your interest.

30 June 2018: It is with great sadness that we report the death of JEFF
KWINTNER founder of the Village Press which reissued so many works by John Cowper
Powys in the 1970s. A truly remarkable individual to whom all Powysians owe a
debt of gratitude, directly or indirectly, a short notice will feature in the
July Newsletter and fuller tributes and an obituary of Jeff will appear in the
November Newsletter. In the meantime you may wish to read JEFF KWINTNER AND THE VILLAGE BOOKSHOP by Paul
Roberts here: http://fashiontribefootnotes.blogspot.com/

The Powys Society NEWSLETTER

July 2018: The Powys Society Newsletter No. 94(48 pages) is now available to all Society members.

March 2018: The Powys Society Newsletter No. 93(48 pages) is also available to all Society members.

Committee
member Kevin Taylor will lead a
discussion ofA Glastonbury Romance, Chapter
15, Mark’s Court, as well as a
discussion of the character of Cordelia as she appears, in selected passages, throughout
the novel.
According to his diary JCP commenced writing Chapter 15 of A Glastonbury Romance in early January 1931:
“Wrote my Mark’s Moor Court chapter about
Mr Geard in Merlin’s chamber and Lady Rachel and all. This is because the T.T.
required a certain element of Romance which so far had not appeared among the
solid bourgeois characters of this book!” (diary, 7 January 1931). This is
one of JCP’s “clue” chapters providing some deep insights into Mr Geard’s
complex identity and his unorthodox Christian beliefs. The chapter, which is
set on Easter Day, has been called, by one critic, “one of the great climaxes of the book”. Our President, Glen
Cavaliero, has also described Mr Geard as “one
of JCP’s supreme creations”. This is a judgement which is perfectly
demonstrated in this chapter. It is also a chapter which also demonstrates
JCP’s genius for comedy and irony. Our discussion will give us an opportunity
to look in detail at JCP’s ability to evoke the shifting margins of human consciousness,
through an analysis of the figure of Mr Geard, and how this effects his
character’s perceptions of the world. We will examine the significance of Mr
Geard’s apparent encounter with the supernatural, the meaning of his “Christ supported nature”, his powers of
psychic projection, his double nature - he blesses the unquiet spirit in the
haunted room of King Mark: “Christ have
mercy on you”, yet JCP also refers to the “diabolic intensity of his dark eyes”; we will examine Mr Geard’s sudden
sense of illumination and his recognition of the Grail which occurs at the
conclusion of the chapter. We will also look at how JCP realises his intention
for Mr Geard as outlined in his diary: “Mr
Geard must think of the secret of real life beyond the spectacular world.” Other
diary entries in early January 1931(see the complete diary published by Jeffrey
Kwintner in 1990) provide some very useful references to the evolution of JCP’s
ideas about Mr Geard.In our
discussion of Cordeliaas a character, we will examine someselected passages about Cordelia
throughout the whole book, referring to JCP’s psychological insights into her
personality, focusing, for instance, on Chapter
7, Carbonek, in the scene on Chalice Hill and at the great oaks; on Chapter 25, Conspiracy, in the scene of
Cordelia’s marriage to Owen Evans where she overhears the murder plot discussed
in the ruined chantry; and Chapter 29, The
Iron Bar, in the scene in which she exorcises a worm. A comprehensive reading list, with page references, of selected passages
about Cordelia has been prepared by Kevin Taylor and can be provided in advance
of the meeting to help aid discussion. Please contact Hon. Secretary for a copy of the reading list if you wish to attend
the meeting.
The meeting will take place at The Old Fire Engine House, restaurant and art gallery, at 25 St
Mary’s Street, Ely, which is located near the Cathedral. We will meet in the
upstairs sitting room at 10.30 for
coffee and welcome. Discussion of Chapter 15 will begin at 11.00. Lunch, which is
optional, will be available from 12.00
to 13.00. We will recommence our discussion after lunch with a study of
Cordelia as a character.

Saturday 7 July
The Library, Dorset County Museum, Dorchester

11.00am(i) The Powyses and
Patchin Place, New York

An illustrated talk
by Ray CrozierJCP’s
relationships with Phyllis, Llewelyn,
Alyse Gregory, and Gamel Woolsey during
hisfive year residence at Patchin Place.

2.00pm(ii) First
Impressions
A Parallel Reading of two short stories:
Nor Iron Bars by T. F. Powys and A
Friend in Need by W. Somerset Maugham.

A talkby John Williams. . . in which “We may also discover that Powys and Maugham
have more in common than we mightfirst have thought.”

At 10.30 for 11.00 start, Ray Crozier will
present an illustrated talk on The
Powyses and Patchin Place, New York. Refreshments will be provided.
Ray will look at JCP’s relationships
with Phyllis, Llewelyn, Alyse Gregory, and Gamel Woolsey during his five year
residence at Patchin Place as well as the wider historical background of this
locality of New York, including the social and cultural context of Patchin
Place, its place in the history of New York bohemian artistic and literary life
in the 1920s, and its significance in JCP’s biography as a place of refuge and
retreat for writing. Ray will also refer to other neighbours, writers, friends,
colleagues and relatives who either made visits to the Powyses or were
residents there. There are memorable descriptions of Patchin Place in JCP’s Autobiography, An Englishman Upstate, Farewell
to America, JCP’s letters to Phyllis and Llewelyn and in his short story The Owl, the Duck, and Miss Rowe, Miss Rowe!
Members may also wish to consult a useful booklet in the Powys Heritage series
published by Cecil Woolf in 2002, called We
Lived in Patchin Place by Boyne Grainger, edited by Tony Head. See also
Patrick Quigley’s article on Patchin Place in la lettre powysienne, No.19, printemps 2010.

After
lunch at 2.00pm,John Williams will
lead a discussion entitled First
Impressions A Parallel Reading of two short stories, Nor Iron Bars by T. F.
Powys, and, A Friend in Need by W. Somerset Maugham. John asks “Have you ever been caught out (for better
or for worse) by discovering that your first impression of someone was
ill-informed?” He says that “Nor Iron
Barsand A Friend in Need are very
different stories by two very different kinds of writer. What these stories
have in common is the way they set out to surprise us with unexpected and
thought-provoking aspects of the characters of their major protagonists, Joseph
Turvey (TFP) and Edward Hyde Burton (Somerset Maugham). By sharing our
responses to these stories we will be able to appreciate ways in which both
writers are masters of the genre. We may also discover that Powys and Maugham
have more in common than we might first have thought. Although you may end up
with a preference for one or other of these stories, the intention is not to
decide which is best, they are too different for that to be helpful!” TFP’s
story Nor Iron Bars was first
published in the collection called The
House with the Echo in 1928. Somerset Maugham’s story has a more
complicated history. It was written under the title A Friend in Need in 1924 and published in Hearst’s International Magazine combined with
Cosmopolitan in April 1925 (USA) and in Nash’s
Magazine (UK) in August 1925 under the title The Man Who Wouldn’t Hurt a Fly. It subsequently appeared in book
form in a collection of magazine stories called Cosmopolitans in 1936 under the original title of A Friend in Need. John has compiled a
list of subjects for discussion at the meeting. If you would like a copy of
this list please notify Hon Secretary
who will also send you a pdf file of
each story. A Friend in Need is
widely available in the Collected Short
Stories of Somerset Maugham, Vol. 2, published by Vintage.

John Williams was Professor of
literary studies at the University of Greenwich from 2006 until his recent
retirement. He has published numerous articles on TFP which have appeared in
past issues of the Newsletter, the Powys Review and the Powys Journal. John has also written a
biography of Wordsworth as well as books on English poetry. He presented talks
on TFP at our conferences in 1995 and 2004 and led a TFP study day in
Dorchester in 2005. John was editor of the Powys
Journal between 1997 and 1999 and was Chairman
of the Powys Society in 2000/2001.

Both
events are free and everyone is welcome. A charge will be
made for optional lunch at Ely and Dorchester. A contribution towards the cost
of refreshments at both events would be very much appreciated. If you plan to
attend either or both of these events please notify

In A Glastonbury Romance, Mr Geard
declares, “Thought is a real thing. It is
a live thing; it creates; it destroys; it begets...” Mr Geard seems to
reflect JCP’s own conception in Autobiography
that “Thoughts are of the utmost
importance and have the power of projecting impalpable eidola.”

The title
of this year’s conference, which has been adapted from one of Coleridge’s
letters to his friend Tom Wedgwood, is intended to convey the intensity of the
creative lives of JCP, TFP, and Llewelyn. There is indeed much passion, wisdom
and humour, as well as thinking, in all the writings of the Powyses. The mysterious
transition from inner thought and idea to concrete word and image is a repeated
theme that will be explored in the talks at this year’s conference. Our speakers
will focus on specific works by JCP, as well as TFP and Llewelyn, to elicit the
primacy of thinking and imaginative forces in their writing.

Our speakers will also
closely scrutinise the structure and meaning of individual passages and
paragraphs in the fiction and non fiction of the Powyses. Charles Lock will analyse some key passages in the chapter Maundy Thursday in A Glastonbury Romance and will discuss differing responses to JCP’s
style of writing; Anthony O’Hear
will examine questions of illusion and reality, including the relation of the
subjective mind to objective reality in Wolf
Solent; Nicholas Birns will
delve deeply into selected passages in works by JCP, TFP and Llewelyn; and Taliesin Gore will present the findings
of his undergraduate dissertation on ideas about pan-psychism in Wolf Solent and A Glastonbury Romance.

On
Saturday afternoon, there will be an opportunity to explore places associated
with A Glastonbury Romance that are
located within easy walking distance from the centre of Glastonbury. Ray Cox has devised a guided tour of
the town visiting places named in thenovel, including the Tor, with readings in situ at each place. Alternatively
members can either begin at Stonedown, following in the footsteps of the
Dekkers, or take a tour by car to Pennard Lane, and Redlake Farm, and then join
a guided walk to Whitelake river, “the
marshlands of Queen’s Sedgmoor”, and the possible location of Whitelake
Cottage, near a tow path and small river weir, which are all described in chapter
5 of A Glastonbury Romance. Members
will be provided with local maps and a list of references to the readings.

On
Saturday evening we have arranged a panel discussion of A Glastonbury Romance. The event, chaired by Timothy Hyman, will
include short presentations by Paul Cheshire, John Hodgson and Anthony O’Hear.
Members are invited to participate in the discussion and contribute their views
of JCP’s novel.

Giles
Dawson, the son of artist, sculptor, and poet, Patricia Vaughan Dawson
(1925-2013), has organised a small display of his mother’s sculptures, prints
and coloured etchings, inspired by JCP’s novels, which can be viewed during the
course of Sunday. Giles will also present a short introduction to Patricia’s
work after the AGM on Sunday morning. The works on display will include Patricia’s
illustrations to The Brazen Head and Porius. Some of these works have been
reproduced in the Powys Society
Newsletter, No.33, and in articles in the Powys Review, Nos 4 and 21.

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collect personal data which you submit to us when you join the Powys Society.

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collect title, name, postal address, post code, telephone number, and e-mail
address for each member of the Society. We also collect and retain records of
any questions or enquiries you send to the Society by letter. We hold this data
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All
personal data about our membership is stored on two data files: a simple list
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A London Meeting
Saturday, 2 December 2017
at The Friends Meeting House, 120 Heath Street, Hampstead
at 2pm for 2.30 start

The Society's Chairman TIMOTHY HYMANwill give a talk on John Cowper Powys'THE RELIGION OF A SCEPTIC
Followed by open discussion

All are welcome. The event is free with refreshments provided after the
discussion.

"Here we are — confronted
by this sublime and horrible universe — with only
one brief life at our disposal, and what must our
bemused, bewildered minds do but rush blindfold over
the crude surface of experience, taking everything
for granted and finding nothing extraordinary in
what we see. Extraordinary? We are surrounded by
things that are staggering; by things that are so
miraculously lovely that you feel they might
dissolve at a touch; and by things so unbearably
atrocious that you feel you would go mad if you
thought of them for more than a flicker of a second."
— John Cowper Powys

“The realm
of John Cowper Powys is dangerous. The reader may wander for years in this
parallel universe, entrapped and bewitched, and never reach its end. There is
always another book to discover, another work to reread. Like Tolkien, Powys
has invented another country, densely peopled, thickly forested, mountainous,
erudite, strangely self-sufficient. This country is less visited than
Tolkien's, but it is as compelling, and it has more air.” — Margaret
Drabble

From AUTOBIOGRAPHY by John Cowper Powys:

“I have tried to write my life as if
I were confessing to a priest, a philosopher, and a wise old woman. I have
tried to write it as if I were going to be executed when it was finished. I
have tried to write it as if I were both God and Devil.”

One is tempted to say only John
Cowper Powys could have written that, and, beyond doubt, only John Cowper Powys
could have written the idiosyncratic and spellbinding work we have here. Yes,
he was influenced by Yeats and Rousseau, especially the latter’s Confessions,
but there is no other work quite like this. It seems almost too pedestrian to
say it covers the first sixty years of his life (he lived for another thirty
years) and to say anything about them, as J. B. Priestley memorably put it,
“would be like turning on a tap before introducing people to Niagara Falls.” J.
B. Priestley also said “It is a book which can be read, with pleasure and
profit, over and over again. It is in fact one of the greatest autobiographies
in the English language. Even if Powys had never written any novels, this one
book alone would have proved him to be a writer of genius.”

In 1909, Mrs
Rodolph Stawell, made a journey, by car, through Wales at a time when there
must have been very few other motorists. She described Llangollen in her book, Motor
Tours in Wales: ‘a little town that owes its charm entirely to its
position...it is an entrancing place.’ In the eighteenth century the
English naturalist, William Bingley, also toured Wales, and observed the view
of Llangollen from a distance ‘with its church and elegant bridge
romantically embosomed in mountains.’ When JCP arrived in Llangollen in May
1935, on the way to his new home in Corwen, he was at first unimpressed. He
wrote in his diary that he thought Llangollen was: ‘a grievous
disappointment...we shall not return.’ However on that first visit he was
also very much impressed by the river Dee and instantly remembered,
appropriately, a line from Milton’s Lycidas, 'where Deva spreads her
wizard stream'. He stared, transfixed, at the ruins of Dinas Bran and
prayed for the soul of Owen Glendower. JCP’s veneration for the subject of his
new novel, which he was already thinking about, connects with a fragment of
verse by Shelley: ‘Great Spirit whom the sea of boundless thought nurtures
within its imagined caves...’ Of course JCP did return to Llangollen many
times. He loved the town and its surroundings reversing his original
impression. For this year’s conference we also return to Llangollen and the
friendly hospitality of the Hand Hotel in its picturesque position overlooking
the Dee. Famous guests who have stayed here, in the past, have included Darwin,
Wordsworth, Browning, Scott and Shaw.

Speakers:David
Goodway, David Stimpson, Patrick Quigley and Grevel Lindop.Full details, including the Conference Booking Form, can be viewed on the Conference 2017webpage

Few writers have
tickets for the express train. Those that do ride smoothly on the rails of ‘great literature’ ever after, sitting back in the
carriages of the canon club: Hardy, Joyce, Lawrence,
Woolf,
Tolkien - the names which a hundred years on have the redolence of luxury
brands and some of the same hard coating of gloss. One of their contemporaries,
John Cowper Powys, is an example of what can go wrong, what happens when a
potential giant ends up trundling into the backwoods on a branch line.

There's standing room only on Powys's train, carriage after carriage of ...

Further information of both the above events on the News and Events webpage

The Powys Society Newsletter

July 2017: The Powys Society Newsletter No. 91
is now available to all Society members.

MARCHFrom THE TWELVE MONTHS by Llewelyn Powys

MARCH

The Ploughboy is
whooping—anon—anon;
There’s joy in the mountains;

There’s life in the
fountains;

Small clouds are
sailing.

Blue sky
prevailing;

The rain is over
and gone!

WILLIAM
WORDSWORTH

IT WAS
THE ROMANS WHO GAVE MARCH its name, calling it Martius after their favourite
god Mars. For centuries March had the honour of being the first month of the
Roman calendar, the month which, owing to the breaking up of the winter,
appeared to these men of war to offer a fresh opportunity of prosecuting their
military campaigns. The Saxons, a people less occupied with thoughts of
bloodshed, called the month Lencten-Monath, a Length-month, because they
observed that it was during its four weeks that the day became longer than the
night. The word Lent is an abbreviation of this word Lencten. Our fathers were
fond of alluding to the month as ‘March, many weathers’, and there is no doubt
that it was the variable character of this transitional period of the year that
gave rise to the old saying ‘March comes in like a lion but goes out like a
lamb’. As a matter of fact, the bitter winds of which the ailing and the aged
complain have a very important part to play in the husbandry of the seasons.
The arable lands have grown sodden after the cold winter sleets, and these
brisk, drying winds rouse the dull clods out of their hibernating inertia
preparing them for the spring sowing.

From
John o’Groats to Land’s End you will not persuade a single farmer to abuse the
winds of March. They appreciate their value too well, and their opinion is
confirmed by a score of proverbs they have had pat from the Ups of their
fathers: ‘A peck of March dust is worth a King’s ransom.’ ‘A dry March never
begs his bread.’

Upon St. David’s Day

Put oats and barley in the clay.

Men
of peace delight to associate the month of March with St. David rather than
with the Roman God of war. St. David was uncle to Arthur, the fairy king. His
birth was prophesied for thirty years before the event took place, though
strange to say even this long foreknowledge in no way prevented the saint from
entering the world a little crookedly, for, though eighteenth in honourable
descent from the Blessed Virgin, St. David made his appearance upon earth as
the bastard child of a Welsh princess. Before the Reformation the following
collect referring to this miraculous prediction was regularly read on St.
David’s Day in the old church of Sarum: ‘O God, who by thy angel did foretell
thy blessed Confessor St. David, thirty years before he was bom, grant unto us
we beseech thee, that celebrating his memory we may, by his intercession,
attain to joys everlasting.’

St.
David had for his diet bread, vegetables, milk, and water, and it was perhaps
on this account that he lived to a great age. He built Glastonbury Abbey and
caused the waters of Bath to become hot. Often when he preached the very ground
upon which he stood would heap itself into a kind of natural pulpit, and always
a white dove would settle itself upon his shoulder. St. Kentigem is said to
have seen his soul being borne to heaven on the wings of angels. We are told
that St. David, while on earth, loved to listen to the birds’ sweet voices
‘among the untrodden grass’. Long after his death a boy had his hand
miraculously riveted to the branch of a tree for having dared to trouble a
wood-pigeon that was building her careless nest of sticks near where the bones
of the Saint lay buried.

There
is an old saying which declares ‘Davyd of Wales loveth well Lekes’, and
although the Saxons have never been tired of making sport of this national
badge—‘Tell him, I’ll knock his leek about his pate upon St. Davie’s Day’—there
is good evidence to show that the historic emblem had its origin in no
insignificant back kitchen brawl, but was rather a Druidic symbol derived from
the Phoenician priesthood who at Byblos were accustomed to exhibit leeks in
pots as sure tokens of the approach of the spring, calling these pots in their
ritual ‘gardens of Adonis’. It is clear the Welshman must never expect
understanding from ‘creeping Saxons’. There remains always the ‘pathos of
difference’ between the two races. In the seventeenth century the hostility of
the English was still so strong that Pepys in his Diary records seeing on St.
David’s Day a Welshman in effigy hung by the neck and left to dangle outside a
London shop window. How beautiful, how tragic, and how true sound the words of
Merlin’s prophecy: ‘Their Lord they will praise, their speech they shall keep,
their land they shall lose—except wild Wales.’

It
would be well, indeed, if the example of St. David with regard to the care of
birds was remembered by every little boy in the spring, so that throughout
England and Wales never more than one egg would be taken from a nest. For it is
in March that the birds first begin to lay their eggs. In every shire of
England the hedgerows give shelter to nurseries, firm and round as porridge
bowls, of nesting thrushes. I can never look at the purple buds of the
elder-trees breaking into leaf without their rank smell recalling to me the
happy days of my childhood, as if the very breath of those far-off celandine
mornings was again upon the air. For there are sights to be seen in our wayside
ditches at that time that might well bring tears to the eyes of a dying man.
How fresh everywhere is the green of the lords and ladies, and how feathery
fair the hedge parsley—the dog violets and the white violets, and the wild blue
violets—‘sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes!’ This is the month when the
meadows first begin to be powdered with daisies, as yet not growing thick
enough for a hobnailed boot to cover nine of them together; indeed scarce thick
enough for the indoor slipper of a little girl, running out on the lawn before
breakfast, to press a quincunx. Chaucer tells us that he often lay upon the
grass so that he might watch the white corona of the daisies’ dainty petals
fold up in the vernal twilight. It was a pastime worthy of so great a poet, for
to an imaginative and understanding mind the mystery of life finds a revelation
in such a sensitive response from the common grass we tread upon:

To see this flower, how it will go
to rest.

For fear of night, so hateth it the
darkness.

All
last year I fed a pair of blue tits, and then suddenly they disappeared from
the garden. Evidendy the notion had already got into their little heads that a
treeless down was no good place for bringing up a family. Many a fortunate
fife’s partnership has had its beginning during the weeks of this month. There
is romance in the air. The petals of the early fruit-trees carry it with their
delicate white hands.

She is walking in
the meadow.

And the woodland
echo rings;

In a moment we shall meet.

THE TWELVE MONTHS by Llewelyn Powys

THE POWYS SOCIETY COLLECTION

The full
contents of the inventory of the Powys Society Collection, now located at Exeter
University, are available to view below. All files (which open in a new tab or window) are available to read in PDF format.

By
the spring of 1911, the writer Llewelyn Powys (1884-1939) – then only
26 – had spent eighteen months at a Swiss sanatorium, being treated for
the tuberculosis which the previous year had nearly killed him. Still
frail, he returned to England, and to Montacute, the Somerset home of
his family, where his father had been vicar for 26 years. This
homecoming, which Powys first described in his remarkable book Skin for
Skin (1925), was fraught with ambiguities, partly occasioned by his
confirmed espousal of a neo-pagan philosophy which turned him against
the religion of his forebears. Here, in Somerset, he ‘came into his
own’, regaining his strength and rediscovering anew the beautiful
landscape of his boyhood. This was characterised by a determination to
extract joy from every passing moment. He cultivated a visionary
response to Nature, relished erotic sensations, and enthusiastically
indulged his friendships – especially with his brother John Cowper
Powys. This ‘eternal flow of life’, as he called it, was a panacea and,
through the writing of this diary, provided ‘food for future years’.
Continuing and expanding the narrative account, Powys’s 1911 diary
charts in candid detail his longings, his friendships, his reading, the
poetry he loved and the letters he received. He writes of his walks in
the countryside of south Somerset, imbibing at inns, encountering
wayfarers, luxuriating in the natural world – and all this in one of
the glorious summers of the twentieth century, when temperatures
famously reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit. In the words of Siegfried
Sassoon, it seemed to all ‘a summer of commingled happiness’. But 1911
was also a year of dramatic social and political upheavals that were
changing the age-old ways of life, rendering the experience of this
year a kind of ‘timeless moment’ – and that is how Powys later
re-imagined it in writings such as Love and Death (1939). With the
insidious disease always in the background, the 1911 diary conveys
vividly what it was like still to live life to the full in the last
throes of Edwardian England before The Great War swept so much away.

“I touch here upon what is to me one of the
profoundest philosophical mysteries: I mean the power of the individual mind to
create its own world, not in complete independence of what is called "the
objective world," but in a steadily growing independence of the attitudes
of the minds toward this world. For what people call the objective world is
really a most fluid, flexible, malleable thing. It is like the wine of the
Priestess Bacbuc in Rabelais. It tastes differently; it is a different cosmos,
to every man, woman, and child. To analyse this "objective world is all
very well, as long as you don't forget that the power to rebuild it by emphasis
and rejection is synonymous with your being alive.” — John Cowper
Powys

“Even
though we waves lie for centuries in the deeps of the waters, so deeply
buried
that no man could think that we should ever rise, yet as all life must
come to
the surface again and again, awakening each time from a deep sleep as
long as
eternity, so we are raised up out of the deeps high above our fellows,
to obey
the winds, to behold the sky, to fly onwards, moving swiftly, to
complete our
course, break and sink once more.

We,
who are waves, know you, who are men, only as another sea, within which
every
living creature is a little wave that rises for a moment and then
breaks and
dies. Our great joy comes when we break, yours when you are born, for
you have
not yet reached that sublime relationship with God which gives the
greatest
happiness to destruction.” —
T.F. Powys

"No
sight that the human eyes can look upon is more provocative of awe than
is the
night sky scattered thick with stars.” — Llewelyn Powys